I've interviewed a ton of people who claim to be "awesome developers", have high knowledge about various languages, designed tons of stuff, yadda yadda yadda, and yet they utterly and completely fail our interview questions.
Bingo. I have been interviewing people for a developer position for some time and have been running into the same thing. I don't expect people to know everything I ask but I do expect them to:
a) be excited about having an interview opportunity b) know the things they "claim" to know on their resume
Saying your are expert level at SQL and then not even know the difference between LEFT/RIGHT joins just doesn't cut it.
Should we be surprised if this is a little addictive?
Not at all. MMORPGs are like 0.0.1 versions of the matrix. They provide an altered reality that many people find more exciting than this reality. We could get into the whole question of what is real, but I will leave that for the philosophy folks.
I do imagine at some point in the future that you will really "plug" into the games and they will seem as real as life itself. Many people will end up not wanting to ever leave their new reality and we may see some sort of social epidemic rise out of it.
All good advice, but it frightens me that you have been modded informative. Are there that many people that really don't know how to go out and meet women(or anyone else for that matter)? Do people really need a step by step instructional on what to do to give themselves confidence and make themselves appealing to others?
I was a little put off on the Zion orgy, so I started thinking about "why" it was put in. Did the WB guys just sell out and put the typical T&A in the movie or did it have a point? The movie was ladden with sexuality and it left me thinking that there must be some point they were trying to get at(other than blatant teen guy marketing).
True, but when you add in that she is the one who brings Neo back to life and has the "I thought you were a man" quote directed at, it does seem like the writers were trying to imply that she is the God figure in the movie.
There was a show on Discovery about the top 10 dangerous jobs. The comercial fisherman part was amazing. Those guys who fish off the coast of Alaska for crabs routinely get mamed or even die. I guess the lure of the job was that you could make ~75k and only work 6 months or so of the year(albiet 24/7 most of the time).
So true. I didn't mean for my comment to sound as though all the programmers suddenly start going to meetings, but that an MBA is certainly not a waste for people who just want to be in tech. I believe that understanding *why* you are writing a piece of code will in the end help you create better software.
they have moved me out of coding and instead I am writing documentation while doing some testing.
I never thought I would see someone say they were happy they got moved from coding to documentation and testing. I hope I can find someone like that to hire:)
I really don't see how the MBA program was designed for CS grads. CS is not IS. I would never even consider and MBA because I would NEVER want to manage people.
I think the days of the techie locked in a room coding to specs are over. Businesses want a person that is not just writing software, but also thinking about how the software they write is going to change the business. They want people who understand the companies objectives, clients, and products and can then write software around it. A good understanding of business makes a software engineer much more effective at gathering requirements and designing in house business software(IIRC this is the largest type of software written).
Maybe go all the way to the PHD level and teach or do research.
Then an MBA probably wouldn't help you too much. I would caution though on becoming too academic. The best teachers I have had only became teachers after becoming successful outside of academia. The "real-world" experience they brought to a class room taught us about how things *do* work and not how they *should* work.
But, I think the main thing any online game really needs to do is work on optimization of network code.
At this stage of online gaming much of this has already been done. Many people are already playing online games(specifically MMORPGs) in a lag free environment from broadband and modems alike. I'm not saying that there won't be more advances, but they will most likely be evolutionary and not revolutionary(ala what Quakeworld did for Quake).
Online gaming is no longer in the infancy stage. People expect bug free, stable, and lag free games. Games that don't provide this right out the box won't last long now anyways. The only thing in the end that will make one game different from everyone elses surviving games will be content.
The next big problem presenting itself to online games is how to bring in the largest audience(which seems to be what this book will deal with). Some people want PvP, others want PvE, and still others want a glorified chat room. The real hurdle when creating these games is how does someone design a game to satisfy as many segments of the gamer population as possible. Then there are other questions such as even if it is possible, is it the right thing to do? Should we pick a certain segment and focus or try to catch many small parts of segments?
So in summary, everyone already expects graphics, special effects, even whizbang network code in todays online games. The problem is that all these things are completely completely useless if there is no content to drive it.
$18 is too much. If you look around at different stores though you can usually find CDs down around the $12 range which is just about what my time is worth to not download and burn it. If you are looking for unusual CDs you should expect to pay more as they could be considered a rare item.
This is FAR FAR more money than you'd make selling CDs even if you sold a million CDs.
This is why any musicians(using the term loosely here) that have any sort of business sense become producers/labels ASAP. Now they get cuts on both ends and start to see some real money from their record sales.
Whether or not you like or hate rap, you have to give a lot of those guys credit for the position many of them get themselves into. People like Eminem, Dr. Dre, P. Diddy(or whatever he's calling himself now), etc... saw pretty quickly that the money is in the label and producing and not in just making records. Remember that these guys are the artist, producer, and label and thus have a vested interest to keep the current situation in place.
I would have to agree. I used the Turbo Tax online software this year and it was a breeze. My situation isn't complicated(1 job, student loans, some interest income/stocks) and having TT fill out all the forms and then electronically file was simple.
For most people some software will do everything they need.
Lets assume for a second that a EULA is a binding contract. When you buy the game you agree to that EULA, and wouldn't contract law then state you must follow what you agreed to?
I guess you could argue fair use, but I read in a recent/. story that Apple has in their OSX EULA that it can only be used on Apple hardware. It seems that Apple has also successfully defended this part of their EULA before. How would Nintendo stating that gameboy roms can only be used on allowed hardware be different?
LOL, I was thinking the same thing. How can it be "superior in every way" when it doesn't even play GBA games. Never thought we would have to tell submitters to RTFA:)
Posessing a ROM for a cartridge you own, as a backup, is legal. Posessing a ROM for a cartridge you don't own is illegal.
You are correct. I bet there is some legalesse that states it is illegal to use that ROM on anything but the intended system though. Owning a ROM then d/ling it to your computer would be legal. Playing it with an emulator on your computer would then be illegal.
One of the goals is to make the new apps database neutral, which means nothing but the simplest SQL and DML.
I'm curious. Unless you are writing a system which you plan to re-sell to clients why make it database neutral? Wouldn't the performance hit you would take by using only things every db can do outweigh the possible advantage you gain by being able to switch databases? Coding to the lowest common denominator database and then trying to use java to make up the difference sounds like a waste unless you absolutely need to be database agnostic.
There was a Disc/TLC show not long ago disproving that urban legend. The cool thing was that they found same make/model of the car, strapped some JATOs(or something similar...think the military was giving them a hard time about aquiring them) to it and gave it a whirl. Since it would be too dangerous for a driver to be in the car they made the whole thing remote controlled and the "driver" flew in a helicopter behind the car. Once they fired the rockets the car easily left behind the helicopter and once the rockets burned out they drove the car back to the staging area.
I agree, the cynical side of me was thinking about all the high flying IPOs of the late nineties. Sometimes a huge influx of capital is what you need to get you over that hump and become successful. The problem is that many companies now IPO just so that the angel investors and the like can get their cut and get out. They are not really doing that well and the capital they receive from the IPO isn't going to change anything.
venture a guess that issuing bonds is cheaper
In my comment I consider bonds and loans to be one in the same. Each is debt as far as I am concerned. It is cheaper in the long run to carry debt than to give away equity for capital. Of course you must be able to service your debt.
A Google IPO would probably be a very cheap source of capital.
Giving away equity for capital is the most *expensive* way of raising capital. In the process of giving away equity you lose ownership and thus control of the company. If a company does IPO then the *cheap* source of capital doesn't look so cheap when the equity sells for many times than the capital that was received.
The true least expensive way to get capital is to get a loan. As long as you make your loan payments the company ownership remains intact and if an IPO ever happens you get to retain all of the equity.
Problem is that many of these companies(not pointing at any in particular) that do IPO can't get loans because their cash flow is so poor. If their cash flow is so bad that they can't get a loan then I must ask how is an IPO going to help them?
And of course that says nothing about the many who died after as a result of sanctions (the figure often heard is at least 500,000 Iraqi children alone, that according to the UN)
To me this is more of a reason to get Saddam out. Many programs were set up to get food and medical supplies to Iraq, but Saddam either used them for himself or, as we recently found out, smuggled in military supplies in the foods place. No one wants war, but at this juncture it is the only way to truly help the Iraqi people.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people think XML is a language.
LOL, so true. Maybe/. should link to a XML FAQ each time they do a story.
XML document == data in a well defined format
XSL/XSLT == tells how to display XML data(think FOP), but is itself a valid XML document
XPATH == XML query language, which after you look a few examples it isn't too hard
SVG == vector graphic format stored in an XML data stream
XML itself is not hard, but until you figure out how all the many pieces fit together it can be confusing. Another thing to keep in mind is that you don't have to use every piece to make use of XML.
The US is going to extreme lengths NOT to hit civilians.
I agree. The US is going so far not to hit civilians that they are putting themselves at risk. IMHO the lives of our troops should be first, but as we have already seen(and Sadddam has exploited) the lives of the Iraqi civilians have been coming first.
It does raise an interesting question though. When Saddam puts AA guns on schools, hides weapons in hospitals, and shoots at US forces from mosques what do we do? Take out these military installations and look evil or leave them be and risk US troops?
It is rather similar to the way two identical seats on an aircraft can be sold for wildly differing pricesbecause of arcane booking rules.
Slightly OT, but the way the airline industry prices seats is probably the most advanced pricing of a good/service to date. There was a great article on their pricing at one of the news sites not long ago(forbes maybe? I can't find it now:( ). Basically airline seat prices change nearly real time during the week(less on the weekends) based on many factors. Very interesting stuff.
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I've interviewed a ton of people who claim to be "awesome developers", have high knowledge about various languages, designed tons of stuff, yadda yadda yadda, and yet they utterly and completely fail our interview questions.
Bingo. I have been interviewing people for a developer position for some time and have been running into the same thing. I don't expect people to know everything I ask but I do expect them to:
a) be excited about having an interview opportunity
b) know the things they "claim" to know on their resume
Saying your are expert level at SQL and then not even know the difference between LEFT/RIGHT joins just doesn't cut it.
Should we be surprised if this is a little addictive?
Not at all. MMORPGs are like 0.0.1 versions of the matrix. They provide an altered reality that many people find more exciting than this reality. We could get into the whole question of what is real, but I will leave that for the philosophy folks.
I do imagine at some point in the future that you will really "plug" into the games and they will seem as real as life itself. Many people will end up not wanting to ever leave their new reality and we may see some sort of social epidemic rise out of it.
All good advice, but it frightens me that you have been modded informative. Are there that many people that really don't know how to go out and meet women(or anyone else for that matter)? Do people really need a step by step instructional on what to do to give themselves confidence and make themselves appealing to others?
I was a little put off on the Zion orgy, so I started thinking about "why" it was put in. Did the WB guys just sell out and put the typical T&A in the movie or did it have a point? The movie was ladden with sexuality and it left me thinking that there must be some point they were trying to get at(other than blatant teen guy marketing).
True, but when you add in that she is the one who brings Neo back to life and has the "I thought you were a man" quote directed at, it does seem like the writers were trying to imply that she is the God figure in the movie.
There was a show on Discovery about the top 10 dangerous jobs. The comercial fisherman part was amazing. Those guys who fish off the coast of Alaska for crabs routinely get mamed or even die. I guess the lure of the job was that you could make ~75k and only work 6 months or so of the year(albiet 24/7 most of the time).
So true. I didn't mean for my comment to sound as though all the programmers suddenly start going to meetings, but that an MBA is certainly not a waste for people who just want to be in tech. I believe that understanding *why* you are writing a piece of code will in the end help you create better software.
they have moved me out of coding and instead I am writing documentation while doing some testing.
:)
I never thought I would see someone say they were happy they got moved from coding to documentation and testing. I hope I can find someone like that to hire
I really don't see how the MBA program was designed for CS grads. CS is not IS. I would never even consider and MBA because I would NEVER want to manage people.
I think the days of the techie locked in a room coding to specs are over. Businesses want a person that is not just writing software, but also thinking about how the software they write is going to change the business. They want people who understand the companies objectives, clients, and products and can then write software around it. A good understanding of business makes a software engineer much more effective at gathering requirements and designing in house business software(IIRC this is the largest type of software written).
Maybe go all the way to the PHD level and teach or do research.
Then an MBA probably wouldn't help you too much. I would caution though on becoming too academic. The best teachers I have had only became teachers after becoming successful outside of academia. The "real-world" experience they brought to a class room taught us about how things *do* work and not how they *should* work.
But, I think the main thing any online game really needs to do is work on optimization of network code.
At this stage of online gaming much of this has already been done. Many people are already playing online games(specifically MMORPGs) in a lag free environment from broadband and modems alike. I'm not saying that there won't be more advances, but they will most likely be evolutionary and not revolutionary(ala what Quakeworld did for Quake).
Online gaming is no longer in the infancy stage. People expect bug free, stable, and lag free games. Games that don't provide this right out the box won't last long now anyways. The only thing in the end that will make one game different from everyone elses surviving games will be content.
The next big problem presenting itself to online games is how to bring in the largest audience(which seems to be what this book will deal with). Some people want PvP, others want PvE, and still others want a glorified chat room. The real hurdle when creating these games is how does someone design a game to satisfy as many segments of the gamer population as possible. Then there are other questions such as even if it is possible, is it the right thing to do? Should we pick a certain segment and focus or try to catch many small parts of segments?
So in summary, everyone already expects graphics, special effects, even whizbang network code in todays online games. The problem is that all these things are completely completely useless if there is no content to drive it.
$18 is too much. If you look around at different stores though you can usually find CDs down around the $12 range which is just about what my time is worth to not download and burn it. If you are looking for unusual CDs you should expect to pay more as they could be considered a rare item.
This is FAR FAR more money than you'd make selling CDs even if you sold a million CDs.
This is why any musicians(using the term loosely here) that have any sort of business sense become producers/labels ASAP. Now they get cuts on both ends and start to see some real money from their record sales.
Whether or not you like or hate rap, you have to give a lot of those guys credit for the position many of them get themselves into. People like Eminem, Dr. Dre, P. Diddy(or whatever he's calling himself now), etc... saw pretty quickly that the money is in the label and producing and not in just making records. Remember that these guys are the artist, producer, and label and thus have a vested interest to keep the current situation in place.
I would have to agree. I used the Turbo Tax online software this year and it was a breeze. My situation isn't complicated(1 job, student loans, some interest income/stocks) and having TT fill out all the forms and then electronically file was simple.
For most people some software will do everything they need.
Lets assume for a second that a EULA is a binding contract. When you buy the game you agree to that EULA, and wouldn't contract law then state you must follow what you agreed to?
/. story that Apple has in their OSX EULA that it can only be used on Apple hardware. It seems that Apple has also successfully defended this part of their EULA before. How would Nintendo stating that gameboy roms can only be used on allowed hardware be different?
I guess you could argue fair use, but I read in a recent
LOL, I was thinking the same thing. How can it be "superior in every way" when it doesn't even play GBA games. Never thought we would have to tell submitters to RTFA :)
Posessing a ROM for a cartridge you own, as a backup, is legal. Posessing a ROM for a cartridge you don't own is illegal.
You are correct. I bet there is some legalesse that states it is illegal to use that ROM on anything but the intended system though. Owning a ROM then d/ling it to your computer would be legal. Playing it with an emulator on your computer would then be illegal.
One of the goals is to make the new apps database neutral, which means nothing but the simplest SQL and DML.
I'm curious. Unless you are writing a system which you plan to re-sell to clients why make it database neutral? Wouldn't the performance hit you would take by using only things every db can do outweigh the possible advantage you gain by being able to switch databases? Coding to the lowest common denominator database and then trying to use java to make up the difference sounds like a waste unless you absolutely need to be database agnostic.
There was a Disc/TLC show not long ago disproving that urban legend. The cool thing was that they found same make/model of the car, strapped some JATOs(or something similar...think the military was giving them a hard time about aquiring them) to it and gave it a whirl. Since it would be too dangerous for a driver to be in the car they made the whole thing remote controlled and the "driver" flew in a helicopter behind the car. Once they fired the rockets the car easily left behind the helicopter and once the rockets burned out they drove the car back to the staging area.
but it's much more than a simple cash-grab...
I agree, the cynical side of me was thinking about all the high flying IPOs of the late nineties. Sometimes a huge influx of capital is what you need to get you over that hump and become successful. The problem is that many companies now IPO just so that the angel investors and the like can get their cut and get out. They are not really doing that well and the capital they receive from the IPO isn't going to change anything.
venture a guess that issuing bonds is cheaper
In my comment I consider bonds and loans to be one in the same. Each is debt as far as I am concerned. It is cheaper in the long run to carry debt than to give away equity for capital. Of course you must be able to service your debt.
A Google IPO would probably be a very cheap source of capital.
Giving away equity for capital is the most *expensive* way of raising capital. In the process of giving away equity you lose ownership and thus control of the company. If a company does IPO then the *cheap* source of capital doesn't look so cheap when the equity sells for many times than the capital that was received.
The true least expensive way to get capital is to get a loan. As long as you make your loan payments the company ownership remains intact and if an IPO ever happens you get to retain all of the equity.
Problem is that many of these companies(not pointing at any in particular) that do IPO can't get loans because their cash flow is so poor. If their cash flow is so bad that they can't get a loan then I must ask how is an IPO going to help them?
And of course that says nothing about the many who died after as a result of sanctions (the figure often heard is at least 500,000 Iraqi children alone, that according to the UN)
To me this is more of a reason to get Saddam out. Many programs were set up to get food and medical supplies to Iraq, but Saddam either used them for himself or, as we recently found out, smuggled in military supplies in the foods place. No one wants war, but at this juncture it is the only way to truly help the Iraqi people.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people think XML is a language.
/. should link to a XML FAQ each time they do a story.
LOL, so true. Maybe
XML document == data in a well defined format
XSL/XSLT == tells how to display XML data(think FOP), but is itself a valid XML document
XPATH == XML query language, which after you look a few examples it isn't too hard
SVG == vector graphic format stored in an XML data stream
XML itself is not hard, but until you figure out how all the many pieces fit together it can be confusing. Another thing to keep in mind is that you don't have to use every piece to make use of XML.
The US is going to extreme lengths NOT to hit civilians.
I agree. The US is going so far not to hit civilians that they are putting themselves at risk. IMHO the lives of our troops should be first, but as we have already seen(and Sadddam has exploited) the lives of the Iraqi civilians have been coming first.
It does raise an interesting question though. When Saddam puts AA guns on schools, hides weapons in hospitals, and shoots at US forces from mosques what do we do? Take out these military installations and look evil or leave them be and risk US troops?
Yep that's it. Thanks :)
It is rather similar to the way two identical seats on an aircraft can be sold for wildly differing pricesbecause of arcane booking rules.
:( ). Basically airline seat prices change nearly real time during the week(less on the weekends) based on many factors. Very interesting stuff.
Slightly OT, but the way the airline industry prices seats is probably the most advanced pricing of a good/service to date. There was a great article on their pricing at one of the news sites not long ago(forbes maybe? I can't find it now